This is not a good post. I’ll tell you that right now. This is me, head aching and fed up with the world, taking the opportunity to vent on my blog. I invite those of you who have differing opinions to step in and tell me how I can better look at this situation because, honestly, I’m so white-hot with rage over this that I am having trouble with being rational.
For me pornography is sort of like a cigar. I think it’s nasty, I think it’s bad for you and I think it smells funny*. I also think if you enjoy it that’s your right as an adult and that’s your thing to deal with. But I don’t like it and I don’t want it in my home.
I’ve been a member of GoodReads since 2007. And I swear to Bast I have no earthly idea where this whole thing with the GIFs came from. (okay, I do. I blame freaking LiveJournal.) But now a bunch of people have joined GoodReads since the first of the year, and they’ve brought the damned things with them. It was bad enough when they were just pictures of cats with flashing captions of idiocy. Seriously, if I see “haters gonna hate” one more time I’m gonna pop. Disagreement and criticism isn’t hate.
But you know what is?
Hate is opening your GoodReads page to read a book review and being greeted with a picture of a naked woman having a penis thrust inside her. Three seconds of that, over and over. Apparently now that GoodReads has Status Updates some people need to tell you that they feel like having sex because they read a dirty book. (Shocker.) And even if you don’t know the person and aren’t friends with the person you still get to look at their pictures if one of your friends “likes” it.
If you complain about this you’re called a “hater” and told that the GIFs are “self-expression”. America is founded on free speech, you’re told. And while this is true apparently the right to show porn to everyone is more of a free speech right than the right to say “I do not want to be forced to look at porn.”
I’m just over it. The internet is FULL of places to get porn. It is easier to get pornography on the Web than it is to get Chinese food delivered in the suburbs of Nashville. Why do you need to shove porn in my face in my quiet little corner of the world?
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*Seriously. Porn smells like latex and gas station cherry air freshener. It’s awful.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
You are a grown up, in a world full of immature children. It is the source of many problems. It is not likely to change. Your challenge is to keep on participating.
That is si frustrating! It doesnt take long for people or trolls to infect a website (goodreads, pinterest) and ruin it for everyone.
Sad
Speaking of…what has happened at Pinterest? I disengaged awhile back but still kept my account. This week a got an email from them breathlessly announcing “new! Blocking!!!”
It sounded ominous–like things had gotten so bad they had to build Fort Pinterest.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
Irony alert. I just opened pinterest after reading this post and what do I see but a big old backside staring back at me. Never seen anything like that before. Seen some skimpily clad folks in the Men’s Fashion section but this is a first for out and out nudity.
I stopped going on to Pinterest due to the vast amount of naked pics and graphic erotic pics being pinned and showing up on the public main boards. So ridiculous. Rumor has it Pinterest is working on getting the sex pics off but its going to take them some time.
Given enough time, human involvement almost inevitably takes a Good Thing and makes it a Formerly Good Thing.
Which browser do you use? Do a Google search and you may be able to find an animated GIF blocker add-on. I realize that doesn’t really solve the underlying issue here, but hopefully it will allow you to continue to use the site without unwanted visual assaults.
Goodreads needs to stop that asap. It will be the death of them.
Agreed that Goodreads needs to set some boundaries. After all, there are KIDS on that site who are looking for their favorite books. I love Goodreads and don’t want it to go the way of some other places…
Oh wow, that’s way past the line. I agree that the gifs are a little out of hand. They are, on occasion, funny when used sparingly. But using them to the degree that some people do (mostly, I note, people who haven’t read the book yet and are just expressing their excitement to with a dozen large gifs) is dumbing down the whole site. Using it to post porn? That’s just way, way out of line. I really do hope Goodreads comes down on this trend hard, because that is just not okay. Like Melissa said, there are kids on that site. Even aside from the fact that adults should have the right not to have to look at porn (like you say, it’s easy enough for people who do want to see it to find), there have got to be some kind of legal reasons to make it so kids don’t stumble across that kind of stuff.